Hockey Has All But Shot Itself In The Head

You just knew the National Hockey League was going straight to H-E-Double hockey sticks when the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup last spring.

Now the question remains as to whether or not it will "go and join that stupid club."

The NHL owners and players have yet to pull the trigger to cancel the 1994-95 NHL season, but that may still happen.

In fact, if you think about it, it already has.

If the NHL owners decide to end their lockout, the season that commences will simply be called the 1995 season, no hyphen between 94 and 95. Or, better yet, call it the season when nobody blinked.

Like a pair of desperados armed to the teeth, the NHL owners and players produced a standoff and neither group budged far from its initial position. The latest proposal tendered by the players on Wednesday signalled something there hasn't been much of since Dec. 6 -- hope.

Not just hope for the season, but hope for the game. Forget about the damage the lockout has caused to the NHL season, think instead of the damage it has caused the game.

"We've been around for 57 seasons so far and our outlook is long term," explained Jay Feaster, General Manager of the American Hockey League's Hershey Bears, the farm club of the Philadelphia Flyers.

"We saw the hockey season this year with interest generated by the New York Rangers breaking their Stanley Cup curse, and in the fall to capitalize on no baseball, no World Series.

"We viewed this as an exciting time, for hockey to be in ascendance. The sport of hockey lost that, and that concerns us."

Feaster's concerns are echoed by hockey fans throughout North America. Their game, not the NHL, is the one taking the hit.

During a time when the NHL should have thrived with no baseball plus a television contract about to kick in, the league stands ready to become the first professional sport to ever cancel an entire season.

The NHL, long regarded as a poor sister to the major sports of football, baseball and basketball, has become a third cousin twice removed in this torturous lockout.

Could such a shut down have been avoided? You bet!

Back when the owners first locked the players out of the arenas, the players said they were willing to play in good faith while a contract was negotiated. The owners wanted a contract before the season started.

The players' latest proposal made concessions in free agency and salary arbitration but did not address the owners' proposed luxury tax, which is viewed as a salary cap by players. In other words, the players are willing to give up some aspects in free agency and arbitration if the owners are willing to give up the luxury tax.

The NHL's Board of Governors is expected to vote on the proposal tomorrow. Approval is required from 14 of the league's 26 teams for the proposal to be accepted.

It's time to start playing hockey. Check the egos at the door and let sanity take a front seat at the Board of Governors meeting. Oh, I forgot. This is the NHL.

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Back in October, I made the bold prediction that we'd see NHL hockey by Christmas. Well, we didn't, but the Scandinavians did. Wayne Gretzky's All-Stars did a pre-Christmas mini-tour in the lands of the Midnight Sun.

Foolish me. I was banking on the NHL owners and players having one thing in common --brains. I guess in hockey, teeth aren't the only things you lose.

The clock struck midnight for the NHL in December. The midnight oil is all but burned out. If you have to blame anyone, blame the New York Rangers. They shook up the natural order of the NHL by ending a 53-year drought.

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The NHL may still be down, but the American Hockey League is thriving, particularly the Hershey Bears. While the Bears are fifth (last) in the Southern Division, attendance is up.

According to Scott Smith, the Publicity/Sales Coordinator for the Bears, attendance is up by an average of 681 per game.

"Through 17 home games, attendance is 110,136, an average of 6,479," Smith said. "Last year at this time, we had 98,568 for an average of 5,798."

For the record, Hersheypark Arena has a capacity of 7,256 for hockey.

"The impact of the lockout from a short-term stand point is that our attendance is up, and part of that increase we believe is attributable to the fact the NHL has not been playing," Feaster said.

Smith also brought in other factors, like playing home games last year on the same nights the Philadelphia Phillies were in the playoffs and the World Series. Regardless, the Bears have set attendance records in three straight seasons.

"It also impacted on us competitively," Feaster added. "We had four or five players assigned to us from Philadelphia before the lockout. Early on, it took a while for those players to become assimilated into the situation here at Hershey. We're still trying to determine whether that's been a plus or a minus."